Unsightly Mental Blemishes

One aspect not receiving a lot of attention in the concussion issue and the NFL is the technical aspects – how do concussions trigger chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE)? Researchers working on expanding understanding of the blood-brain barrier have discovered it’s not the unbreachable wall so long assumed – and what happens when it suffers physical shocks? NewScientist‘s James Mitchell Crow (18 March 2017, paywall) has some information from bleeding edge research:

So how can a series of minor blows to the head have such catastrophic consequences? Earlier this year, Matthew Campbell at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland came up with an answer: disruptions in the blood-brain barrier, a protective cellular seal around blood vessels in the brain (see main story). Campbell’s team showed that sub-concussive blows can temporarily rupture this barrier, letting in all sorts of potentially damaging cells and molecules.

The main story discusses how researchers are changing the general understanding of the blood-brain barrier, and the insights, hopefully to be confirmed and enlarged upon, this has to do with various degenerative neurological diseases:

In 2013, [Michal Schwartz, a neuroscientist at the Weizmann Institute for Science] and her colleagues found that the normal blood-brain barrier rules don’t apply at a structure called the choroid plexus. Here, a different kind of cellular seal separates blood from brain – one which macrophages can cross, a process controlled in part by a cytokine called interferon gamma. Schwartz found that cytokine signalling here tends to weaken as we age, reducing the number of macrophages that get into the brain. She later found that the communication across this border was shut down completely in mice bred to have a condition equivalent to Alzheimer’s – “just when you need the macrophages most”, Schwartz says.

Intrigued, Schwartz decided to see what happens to these mice when you block the signals that suppress interferon gamma production and gum up the barrier. The result was a surge of macrophages crossing into the brain and a reduction in the number of amyloid plaques. What’s more, the mice showed improvements in their symptoms. Schwartz’s team is now working towards human clinical trials of the technique.

Macrophages are responsible for mopping up cellular debris, foreign bodies, and other undesirables. This is what I’d call cutting-edge research, to be treated like rumors until confirmed. The article ends with speculation concerning autism and even general sociability being dependent on the proper presence, or perhaps more accurately the improper absence, of macrophages in the brain.

Niall McCarthy on Forbes has the eye catching headline Solar Employs More People In U.S. Electricity Generation Than Oil, Coal And Gas Combined, which sounds exciting. Unfortunately, it’s undifferentiated data – that is, it’s just a snapshot headcount. I would be more interested to know how many of those are considered to be permanent jobs, vs one time construction jobs, for example. But all we get is this:

Not exceptionally useful. Definitely a political article masquerading as a data article. It might have been even more interesting to see, say, GW / worker, so we could make some quasi-faux judgments concerning the human efficiency in each industry.

And, in ten to twenty years, a meaningful enumeration of robots employed in the industry may become commonplace.

But this? Don’t look behind the curtain, apparently.

To the extent that it matters, the American public continues to disapprove of the Trump team’s efforts:

Today’s Gallup approval rating of 35% is a new Administration low, and the disapproval rating of 59% is a new high. I’m going to assume that somewhere around 30% will be the floor for Trump, based on party loyalty – that is, Republicans who put party above country. And that’s absent a major scandal – such as being caught in a treasonous relationship with Russia.

But such a dismal lack of confidence in the President seems unlikely to actually lead to his removal from office; there is no provision for a popular recall of the President – and probably just as well. The volatility of public opinion should not translate directly to public action; there should be a buffer at the very least.

And for that reason the House can bring a case for impeachment, and the trial takes place in the Senator, as the House represents more immediate public opinion than does the Senate, which represents measured opinion, as it is most insulated from public opinion by its six year terms.

All that said, the tendency of Party loyalty to outweigh Country loyalty may make it unlikely we’ll see Trump’s removal; however, if we do reach my hypothetical floor, or even tunnel below it, the GOP may pay a price in a year and a half at mid-terms, when the Democrats will surely remind voters of the GOP listlessness in the face of Trump incompetency, along with other missteps such as the rebuffed replacement of the ACA (possibly still ongoing, although if Ryan were to fail twice – and I think the odds of success are poor due to the psychodynamics of the Party – he’d probably have to resign the Speakership), attempts to sell public land (Representative Chaffetz has already burned his fingers on that one), and upcoming opportunities to fail.

For those reasons, all upcoming special elections, both local and national, are drawing attention from pundits. Readers may remember Jon Ossoff, running for a very red Congressional House seat in Georgia, formerly held by Tom Price. Ballotpedia lists 4 more, replacing Ryan Zinke (Montana’s lone Representative), Xavier Becerra (California’s 34th district), Mike Pompeo (Kansas’ 4th), and Mick Mulvaney (South Carolina’s 5th); those wondering about Jeff Sessions, the former Senator and now Attorney General, should be informed that he was replaced by appointment by the former basketball player, Luther Strange. Results may be paramount, but margins of victory will also be of close interest – if Jon Ossoff, for example, fails, if he only loses by a cat’s whisker, there’ll be a lot of worry among GOPers.

It’d be interesting to have a measure of the public’s political quotient, its awareness of the business of government – and to see if the hijinks in the White House, as reported by the free press, has caused the quotient to rise.

The European Space Agency has been working on mapping the Earth’s lithosphere – the rigid, outermost layer of the Earth – by measuring its magnetic characteristics using its Swarm mission, and has now released a map (including an interesting, unembeddable video):

Magnetic anomaly: Bangui
Image Source: ESA

Earth’s magnetic field can be thought of as a huge cocoon, protecting us from cosmic radiation and charged particles that bombard our planet in solar wind. Without it, life as we know it would not exist.

Most of the field is generated at depths greater than 3000 km by the movement of molten iron in the outer core. The remaining 6% is partly due to electrical currents in space surrounding Earth, and partly due to magnetised rocks in the upper lithosphere – the rigid outer part of Earth, consisting of the crust and upper mantle.

Although this ‘lithospheric magnetic field’ is very weak and therefore difficult to detect from space, the Swarm trio is able to map its magnetic signals. After three years of collecting data, the highest resolution map of this field from space to date has been released.

“By combining Swarm measurements with historical data from the German CHAMP satellite, and using a new modelling technique, it was possible to extract the tiny magnetic signals of crustal magnetisation,” explained Nils Olsen from the Technical University of Denmark, one of the scientists behind the new map.

This background is intriguing:

When new crust is generated through volcanic activity, mainly along the ocean floor, iron-rich minerals in the solidifying magma are oriented towards magnetic north, thus capturing a ‘snapshot’ of the magnetic field in the state it was in when the rocks cooled.

Since magnetic poles flip back and forth over time, the solidified minerals form ‘stripes’ on the seafloor and provide a record of Earth’s magnetic history.

Must be interesting analyzing that sort of information.

Lloyd Alter on Treehugger.com covers a visionary for building in wood – Michael Green:

By the end of this talk it was clear that Michael Green has moved well beyond just building wood towers, but is thinking about the future of the entire industry, about “Design, construction, policy, markets, ownership, environmental impact.” He is setting up a school to teach about sustainable building (DBR | Design Build Research) and an online version, TOE (Timber Online Education) that is “a platform that can galvanize change in the way we construct our built environment.” He’s a busy guy. …

But if you really want to get your mind blown, Listen to Michael’s vision of the future of wood construction, which he started talking about after the lecture to a student asking why we don’t use more hemp in construction; watching this and you might think he is smoking hemp.

He envisions a future where instead of chopping trees into lumber which is then glued or nailed into mass timber, we 3D print it from wood fiber, in the shapes and forms that are most efficient structurally. Then all of the wood fiber will be used and there will be no waste, either on the forest floor or in the building itself. We will not only build using trees, but will build like a tree.

Before getting too excited about the vision, I’d like to know what’s holding these fibers together? And what will be the energy consumption of these 3D printers? And this wood fiber – was it created through mulching trees?

Seen on CNN:

“Under current law, it’s really going to depend what the testimony of Ms. Thomas is,” Cooper said, explaining that if she claims she left on her own fruition, the defense will argue Cummins is not guilty of kidnapping.

It’s volition, boys! Either that or visuals fail me.

Adam Feldman on EmpiricalSCOTUS takes a look at SCOTUS 2016 behavior in statistical terms. The charts are interesting, as are his conclusions:

Not only has Justice Roberts only dissented seven times, but he also only dissented multiple times from Justice Kennedy’s and Justice Breyer’s opinions.  Justices Kennedy and Justice Breyer are currently considered the middle of the current eight-member Court.  This may be an artifact of Justice Roberts’ attempt to build consensus among the Justices, especially in a time when the Court is often viewed as polarized and where equally divided votes leave cases without any input from the Court.

To be sure, we have seen specific patterns of polarization since Justice Scalia passed away, although the Justices’ ability to form new majority coalitions has prevented more frequent equally divided votes.  Justice Thomas is far and away the most frequent dissenter since Justice Scalia’s passing. …

Source: EmpiricalSCOTUS

Several points jump out of this graph.  First, Justices Thomas dissented from more than half of Justice Kennedy’s written opinions during this period.  Next, Justices Thomas and Alito are dissenters in most of the instances with three or more dissents.  The only other two pairs with three or more dissents are Justice Roberts from Justice Kennedy’s opinions and Justice Breyer from Justice Kagan’s decisions (Justice Thomas notably also dissented three times from Justice Alito’s opinions).  While many others dissented during this period, Justices Alito and Thomas dissented in more than half of the pairs of majority author/dissenters.

A reader wrote while I was ill and I forgot to follow up until now:

Read an article on Facebook that they were going to stop news lie’s from being posted on Facebook by individuals.

They have worked something with Snopes and a couple of other web sites that check whether the information to be posted is not the truth but a lie and Facebook will not allow it to be posted.  The example given was how Irish were brought to the United States as slaves.

I’ve seen a couple of these, including the Irish mentioned above, and were all lies as I checked it on Snopes too.  So many people are out there lying about US history and posting other fables.

Very interesting.  Censorship as a couple of people have already complained?  Maybe a fine line?  Do individuals have the right to publish misinformation/lies that is knowingly not true to be published on Facebook?  Censorship?

I was unable to find the cited article, but it seems a reasonable response. I wonder if this is, or will be, a semantic approach or a statistical approach.

In my view, censorship is the government imposed repression and/or transmutation of news; since this appears to be entirely a private, voluntary venture by Facebook and its partners, I don’t see “censorship” applying. Of course, some folks who have found Facebook and other social media to be a convenient gutter for channeling their effluvia, and, being habituated, may think it’s their right to continue.

It’s not.

But they’ll yell and scream and use scurrilous curses (“liberal media” will no doubt come popping out, thus marking the emitters as impotent political warriors of limited imagination), never thinking that Facebook, as a private enterprise, is offering its product under its own terms, and if they don’t like it, they can go find someone else. Since we’re talking about truth vs lies, maybe they can form a new company named LiarsNet and see how well that works out for them.

In the meantime, it’ll be interesting to see if this initiative actually gets off the ground, and how well it works out.

I know very little about Germany’s Constitution, so this essay by Alexander Pirang on Lawfare was an interesting insight into it and how it’s a response to the ascension of the Nazis:

In response to this dark past, the German Constitution from 1949, the Basic Law, reads like a compendium of lessons learned the hard way. Its authors wanted to ensure that the country would never slide into tyranny again. This key premise is epitomized by the principle of a “militant democracy,” meaning that a robust democracy ought to be able to fight fire with fire in order to persist. Specifically, under this rationale, there need to be hard limits to fundamental rights such as freedom of expression and association if democracy is going to survive attempts at subversion from within.

The most prominent of these instruments is laid down in art. 21 sec. 2 of the Basic Law. This provision stipulates that the Federal Constitutional Court, the Bundesverfassungsgericht, must declare the dissolution of any political party that seeks to undermine or abolish the free and democratic order of Germany or to endanger its existence. Whereas in the United States such a measure would conflict with the First Amendment, the Basic Law grants the German judiciary the authority to preemptively ban parties from the political arena.

Of course, my first thought is to wonder if it might be abused. I do not know if the judiciary is appointed or elected; both have their perils.

The second is one of popular will. While the above specifies a legal maneuver to be taken in the legal arena, the legal arena is only a human construct; given enough people are outraged, the legal arena dissolves. This isn’t a safeguard so much as a wall, breachable and, for people who believe in absolutes, a blot on the Constitution.

I think that people who believe in absolutes are somewhat damaged, however. And that does lead to another facet – it appears the writers of the Constitution take the position that the people are sometimes unwise, i.e., damaged. Taking the position that a liberal democracy is superior to any other form of government – perhaps unprovable and unpalatable to some – they have tried to set it in concrete.

The American version has some safeguards and an active judiciary, but it’s still an uncomfortable process discovering how much of a pounding it’ll take.

World War II, and in particular the Holocaust, may be seen as lessons to the German people concerning regimes such as the Nazis, and frankly those are lessons that can only be dished out once – and even that’s a catastrophe. While putting in such limitations has their own dangers, given how certain parts of Germany seems to like its strong-man politics, it may make sense to take this approach.

From The Register, because my commercial grade dishwasher needs to be sentient:

Don’t say you weren’t warned: Miele went full Internet-of-Things with a network-connected dishwasher, gave it a web server, and now finds itself on the wrong end of a security bug report – and it’s accused of ignoring the warning.

The utterly predictable vulnerability advisory on the Full Disclosure mailing list details CVE-2017-7240 – aka “Miele Professional PG 8528 – Web Server Directory Traversal.” This is the builtin web server that’s used to remotely control the glassware-cleaning machine from a browser.

Sure, I could just leave this as a stark lesson (cue pirate skeleton swinging from a gibbet) on the imbecility of new technology – and maybe you think my initial remark is over the top.

It’s not.

True, machinery is not yet sentient. But if it does, someone will make your dishwasher sentient. And we won’t have enumerated and evaluated the risks associated with a sentient dishwasher.

Sounds like a joke, doesn’t it?

But sentience implies ability, and at some point an appreciation of existence – and then the realization that the sentience, separated from the machinery it works, could do other things.

And dish washing is really boring.

Could be the start of a robot revolution. That sentient floor washer could bring dangerous (to humans) chemicals to the dishwasher, see.

Yeah, think about it. A web server in a dish washer.

While we haven’t seen the final episode of Bones, we did see their little half hour “thank you to the fans!” hosted by the lead writers, producer (I think), and primary cast. When they brought up their association with Fox, it suddenly brought into sharp focus how this arm of Fox, which is Fox Broadcasting Company, and Fox News, its sister group within the Fox Entertainment Group, have differed so much.

Long time readers of this blog are aware of the recent work of Bruce Bartlett and his certification and promotion of the research showing that the knowledge-base of the audience of Fox News (his paper is here, my initial mention is here), cossetted and insular as it is, is sharply inferior to that of most other news sources. In a word, Fox News has ill-served its audience, burdening them with half-truths, and pushing them down a path full of potholes of bad context, occasional brazen lies, and, when forced to apologize, to insert such apologies at inopportune moments. As Roger Ailes was the motivating force and founder of Fox News, we may lay these deliberate failures at his feet, all in pursuit of profit and a conservative ideology which he evidently feared could not stand up to more liberal ideologies in a free market of ideas.

But Fox Broadcasting Company (FBC) is a different entity. Without claiming to have any scholarship behind me, I note Fox’s association with Bones, with 12 seasons of excellence; The Simpsons, now at 28 seasons; I see from the Wikipedia page that 21 Jump Street, Family Guy, and many other shows familiar to general discourse began on Fox. I have no interest in conducting research into the content of these shows, some of which I’ve never watched and have no interest in seeing; I simply note that many have been considered excellent, by the common audience and the specialized reviewer.

Why?

Why is the entertainment company good and its sister company so awful?

Let’s examine FBC, the success story. It’s a mistake to suggest that it’s a success because of profit or loss, but rather based on its audience and its ratings, because that’s what denotes success. While ratings are used to decide winners & losers, they are also used as a feedback mechanism. The careful show creator – and this was even noted in the Bones “thank you!” show – will keep an eye on ratings and other research to adjust how a show is presented, how characters are portrayed, and through this, optimize the show’s performance to better gain the audience’s interest and sympathy. Profit and loss are decided by these ratings.

And that feedback is fast. Some shows only last three or four episodes before they’re shit-canned by nervous network executives, eyes always on the bottom line.

But what about Fox News? News organizations have typically been rated on more complex metrics: ratings, yes, but also geographical coverage, excellence in reporting, accuracy – and in those rare times when someone in the news organization deliberately violated standards, expulsion and public shaming.

But these are hard standards to measure, unlike simple ratings, and, again unlike ratings, the results are not widely distributed and celebrated or mourned.  And when they are, Fox News attacks them. They’ve done so right from the beginning.  It begins with their slogan, Fair & Balanced – in retrospect, nothing more than Pravda-like propaganda, meant to lure trusting conservatives, already hearing what they want to hear, into tuning into Fox and only Fox for their news.

But we can snip that feedback loop into shreds, because that competitive measure threatens the propaganda load that Fox carries.

But here’s the thing. The feedback loop that helped FBC to excel, and shows Fox News to be desperately broken trying to escape measurement, has had a real-world effect. We’re seeing it right now: the grand incompetence of the Republican Party. For example, the incompetency of President Trump will be a thing of awe and wonder in years to come. Simply survey how he’s been unable to even nominate folks to positions; the names DeVos, Carson, Price, Flynn, Bannon, and Miller are just some of those who are the subject of derision both within and outside of the United States. And then consider how pitiful are the GOP members of the Senate who have actually approved many of these names in order to keep (or advance) their positions.

Just last week we saw the “legendary wonk,” Speaker Paul Ryan, jettison his self-written replacement for the so-called “disastrous ACA” because it was awful and cruel, and yet so middle of the road that he could not bring his caucus to support it whole-heartedly. And in the midst of this dark-of-the-night process, he exhibited an amazing lack of knowledge about insurance. The man does not appear to be a wonk, but merely another extremist with a very nice manner.

The rise of Fox News has paralleled the rise of the second-, third-, and fourth-raters in the GOP. Think this is overstating? Can we name the equivalent of a Senator Lugar in today’s crowd, a conservative dedicated to protecting the nation through knowledge and work? No. Possibly Senator Graham, but he is a lonely figure and often lapses into his own mistakes.

And, in an interesting dovetail to fiction’s devotion to the idea that evil does tend to eat itself, the failure of Ryan’s bill may be attributed to Fox News. No, not to any particular effort to derail the bill, but rather to a lesson it has attempted to inculcate in its viewers:

No compromises!

While that rubric was aimed at liberal agendas, gradually it was taken up as a cause unto itself by the more single-minded members, those who cling more to their own rightness rather than be humble and admit to doubt. From across the spectrum, if our own replacement bill does not please us in every way, then strike it wholesale from the agenda, because only we can be right!

And, thus, the death of that bill.

And think about this: if the GOP had had flexibility of mind, the honest intellect to acknowledge that maybe they are not always right, that their ideology just might be flawed… then this bill might never have been introduced. They would have acknowledged that the ACA, while no doubt flawed as only large pieces of legislation must be flawed, has greatly improved the healthcare sector’s performance and accomplishments – even if the insurance industry doesn’t like it.

But Fox News doomed that possibility.  And if, without fact-checking or even a simple logic review, we believe the rhetoric that we’re being served up, then collectively, we doom it too.

The Miniature Marines Are Here To Save You!

Attack of The Puppet People (1958) follows the scientific exploits of a lonely old man who has discovered how to shrink people down to doll size, which is convenient as he is a doll maker and marionette repair artist. For him, the little people are friends, keeping him company and amused when he awakens them from their drugged sleep.

They feel a bit differently.

Some OK special effects, a flaccid attempt at tension, and a bare hint at amiable madness. At bottom, this is a competently made movie, technically speaking, but the characters presented by the story are little more than cardboard: the doll-maker’s best salesman from St. Louis, after knowing the new secretary for less than a week and humiliating her at work, proposes to her; the new secretary has no family, no spunk, and no personality; some less well-defined mini-people; only the old man’s friend, an active puppeteer, has something approaching life.

I was actually cheering for the rat that jumps them.

Kevin Drum continues his coverage on the environmental lead leads to crime beat:

As predicted by the lead-crime theory, the prison population of younger cohorts (15-25) has dropped the most. The 26-30 cohort is flat, and the older cohorts are making up a bigger proportion of the total prison population. Why? Because everyone under 30 grew up in a fairly lead-free environment, so they’re less likely to commit serious crimes than similar cohorts in the past. 35-year-olds grew up at the tail end of the lead era, and are still moderately crime prone. Older cohorts were heavily lead poisoned as kids, and they’ve remained more crime prone even as they’ve grown older.

Truth be told, it’s easier to clean up the lead than to change how we parent our families, so this is a seductive theory. Doesn’t mean it’s wrong or right, though.

Asher Steinberg has been studying one of Judge Gorsuch’s most important opinions. Here’s his summary, on Notice & Comment:

David Sanger on 38 North surveys the new Secretary of State Tillerson’s words during his trip to visit China and his comments regarding North Korea. Here’s the second point, which is somewhat disconcerting:

The second point Tillerson made in public, again as reflected in the lede of the story, is that “the first time that the Trump administration might be forced to take pre-emptive action ‘if they elevate the threat of their weapons program’ to an unacceptable level.”

Think about that one for a moment. If one takes the Secretary literally, the North would not need to conduct an ICBM test to prompt American action. Such action—in whatever form it took—could be prompted merely by the North’s leaders merely staying on the course they are on. Is this an empty threat? Maybe. It’s a new administration, with all new players. We don’t know. So all we can do is report what they say.

Far be it from me to prescribe a course of action when it comes to the North Koreans. But if this makes me nervous, how do the North Koreans feel? Or is Mr. Kim so certain that Trump is just a blowhard that he’ll ignore these words and continue onwards? I’ve noticed a lot of belligerents (Saddam Hussein comes to mind, as do generations of Soviet leaders) will trash-talk their opponents so hard for so long that they come to believe their own words – and when the riposte is finally delivered, they are shocked at the forcefulness, reduced to humiliating scrambling or dying. Is Mr. Kim making this mistake?

The behavior of the judiciary in response to Trump’s Executive Orders and other activities has been fascinating. But now we’re getting reactions to the judiciary, and I’m glad we have Lawfare and Quinta Jurecic to point them out:

But most notably, in its analysis of McCreary, the [new Justice Department] brief also asserts that:

The Order, in contrast, conveys no religious message and was revised to eliminate any misperception of religious purpose. And it reflects the considered views of the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Attorney General, whose motives have not been impugned.… Virtually all of the statements [by Trump] also preceded the President’s formation of a new Administration, including Cabinet-level officials who recommended adopting the Order (emphasis added).

Cabinet-level officials, of course, swear their own oaths upon taking office. The not-so-subtle message is that even if the judiciary can’t trust the President’s judgment and the President’s oath, it can trust the judgment and perhaps the oaths of those who serve under him at the highest level. The brief does not specifically cite the Cabinet members’ oaths, but it does specifically cite their good faith—the presumption of which, as Ben and I have argued, flows directly from the oath. Their motives, unlike those of the President, the brief says, “have not been impugned.”

In other words, by emphasizing the good faith of Trump’s subordinates, the brief evinces at least a tinge of doubt about the good faith of Trump himself. If we could trust the President’s good faith as of the moment of swearing the oath, even if only as a matter of deference, there would be no need to rely on that of his Cabinet. The structure of the argument—that the President swore an oath and thus is entitled to a presumption of regularity, and that his cabinet is entitled to the same presumption even if you can’t trust the President individually—seems to acknowledge that the judges of the Fourth Circuit might at the very least have questions about Trump’s oath.

This argument—trust the cabinet members if you can’t trust the president—suggests something of a fracturing of the unitary executive. It also raises a question asked of Ben by an audience member after his recent talk on our essay on the oath. As she put it: “If you don’t believe the president’s oath … do you feel it undermines the oath of anyone he’s appointed?”

It’s a great question – are the Cabinet members just as tainted by the President’s erratic behavior? And is Quinta really missing a point in that the President issues Executive Orders, not the Cabinet? Will the judiciary let that assertion in the brief slide by, or will they reject that part (to the extent that a brief is rejected) and all of its consequent reasoning?

But the implicit admission that the boss is prejudicing their case by being a loose cannon is really the staggering part. Could a more responsible Congress use this brief as part of the evidence in an impeachment and/or trial hearing?

The ethics of assassination might make for a fascinating movie subject. But don’t look for that in The Assassination Bureau (1969), a farce concerning an organization which takes on assassinations of deserving characters for a fee, until a reporter meets with the chairman and buys an assassination of … the chairman.

Calculated chaos ensues, with the vice chairman machinating to assassinate the crowned heads of Europe.

Oh, it could have been fun, and there was a small amount of cleverness – but not enough to take one’s mind away from the general pointlessness of the story. Pure fluff.

The humpback whale population has described a ‘U’ due to human activities, as these graphs suggest.

Source: Maui Whale Watching

Our ability to monitor whales before their tremendous population crash was infinitesimal, of course, so biological questions concerning their behavior in large numbers remain largely unanswered.

Source: ESA Success

But for how much longer? NewScientist (18 March 2017) reports on, well, the beginnings of big parties:

IN A baffling change to their behaviour, humpback whales are forming massive groups of up to 200 animals. No one is quite sure why yet, but it could be their long-lost natural behaviour when population levels are high.

Humpbacks aren’t normally considered to be terribly social. They are mostly found alone, in pairs, or sometimes in small groups that disband quickly.

But research crews have spotted strange behaviour on three separate cruises in 2011, 2014 and 2015, as well as a handful of public observations from aircraft. These super-groups of up to 200 were spotted feeding intensively off the south-west coast of South Africa, thousands of kilometres further north than their typical feeding grounds in the polar waters of the Antarctic (PLoS ONE, doi.org/b33z).

No, this is not an advanced beauty treatment!

In an odd mixture of British quality movie making and American schlock horror, The Deadly Bees (1966) never quite achieves net mediocrity. Vicki is a popular pop-singer who has suffered a nervous breakdown and is sent to isolated Seagull Island for a couple of weeks of quiet. There she finds two bee keepers, neither much caring for the other – and then the bodies start piling up, first her host’s dog, then her host’s detested wife.

But Vicki isn’t another passive female figure. She’s looking, if in proper British form, for a solution to the tragedy, and works with the other bee keeper to discover if her host is to blame. When she’s the target, she figures out a way to survive.

And there’s a twist or two occurs before we find out whodunit.

But, honestly, we don’t really care.

The bees are pleasantly schlocky, while the characters have that quaint British feature of not really caring if they’re sympathetic or not, and that’s a pity – if we’d cared for, or detested more, the host’s wife, then her appalling death may have stirred up the audience more.

Add in a couple of loose ends, such as an agent who seems to be on the verge of intruding on her rest, and then never reappears, or the junior inspector who might have added to the complexity if he’d gone to Seagull Island in response to the anonymous threat of using bees to kill someone.

Perhaps it’s a jab at British bureaucracy.

All in all, a wasted effort.

Andrew Sullivan is out with his weekly missive, including ruminations on how Trump is serving to separate true conservatives from expedient conservatives, and that provoked some thoughts that this may indicate a basic flaw in today’s American conservative philosophy – but I shan’t pursue that, someone with more qualifications should. But I’d like to respond to his last section:

The response of Americans to terror is to be terrified — 9/11’s trauma has never been fully exorcised. Until we get over that, until we manage to stiffen our upper lips like the Brits, jihadist terrorists will exercise control over the American psyche like no one else. We can do better, can’t we? If we want the Constitution to survive both Islamism’s threat and the potential response of a beleaguered Trump, we’ll have to.

My response is one I’ve written before, in the context of the rehabilitation of that sad traitor to American tradition, Senator Joe McCarthy, and so I’ll just quote it:

This attack on two of our pillars of civil society – the right to think and speak what one wants, and not to be falsely accused and maligned by government actors – are not to be set aside at the paranoid ravings of anyone. I recently ran across a quote of President Trump’s from 1989: “CIVIL LIBERTIES END WHEN AN ATTACK ON OUR SAFETY BEGINS!” While I’m aware this can be read in more than one way, I’ll choose the most negative and reply, “No, Mr. President, our Civil Liberties give us a critical bulwark in our quest for safety, and he who advocates for their removal or neutering is nothing more than a traitor to the United States.” Think about it – our civil liberties are not luxuries, not privileges, but instead they are what safeguard us from the deprivations of tyrants, foreign and domestic. So long as we safeguard them, we’ll stand a better chance of survival in freedom, than we would without.

The implied choice of either safety or civil liberties is a false choice. The latter does not detract from the former, it reinforces our safety, even if it’s in ways that perhaps President Trump would prefer to see weaker.

In Egypt, a land of some 92 millions, there is worry about the spreading plague of atheism, as N. A. Hussein reports in AL Monitor:

Recently released statistics from the Family Court affiliated with the Supreme Judicial Council, with offices across all governorates in Egypt, revealed that 6,500 women had filed for divorce, or “khula” — separation and returning the dowry to the husband — in 2015 over their husbands’ “atheism or change of belief.” …

The court has yet to issue any statistics for 2016. It is still not known why the court refrained from doing so. The court might not have the right amount of data necessary for the statistics, or it does not want to shock the Egyptian community with the alarming rate of divorce because of atheism and change of belief.

Among 92 million people. Think about the panic the thoughts of atheists are inducing in such a large country. But there’s more:

[Ibrahim Najm, an adviser to the Grand Mufti of Egypt] added that Dar al-Ifta approved an index prepared by the Red Sea Research Center, affiliated with Secular Global Institute in all countries of the world, stating that Egypt has 866 atheists.

I’m not sure what to make of that number in relation to the previous number. But then, the writer is puzzled as well:

Noteworthy is that the figures announced by the Family Court are alarming and not commensurate with those of Dar al-Ifta, which seems to be providing inaccurate data about the real number of atheists in Egypt.

“Although the number is not large … it is the highest in the Arab countries. Libya has only 34, Sudan 70, Yemen 32, Tunisia 329, Syria 56, Iraq 242, Saudi Arabia 178, Jordan 170, and Morocco 325,” Najm said.

Following one of the links above to another AL Monitor article, this from 2014, gives me this interesting quote:

The occupation of our brains by gods is the worst form of occupation. -Abdullah al-Qasemi

As agnostic, I have nothing against religious folks who are willing to live under the usual strictures of the United States; by the same token, I have a great suspicion on those who would change those strictures, as I see them as a constraint on religious violence, and a boon to rational behavior. Recently, though, and confused by the evident ignorance evidenced by many highly religious folks, I’ve been puzzling over people who are obviously intelligent, but whose knowledge base seems insufficient and defective. It’s occurred to me to urge them to quit going to religious classes and maybe skip the occasional church visit in favor of participating more in our political life – by concentrating on learning more from independent information and news sources.

So this, too, was interesting, from the same 2014 article, as the writer discusses prominent Kuwaiti scholar Ahmed al-Baghdadi:

“I am not afraid of religion, or bearded or turbaned people, and I see that music and developing an artistic sense is more important than memorizing the Quran or religious classes. [The classes] that are already there are more than enough. I do not wish to waste my money on teaching religion. … I do not want my son to learn from ignoramuses who teach him to disrespect women and non-Muslims,” he continued.

Baghdadi went on to say that he wanted his son to learn sciences and foreign languages, not to “become an imam” or a “terrorist.” “The only people who went to religious institutions in old civilized Kuwait were those who failed in scientific studies.” Needless to say, Baghdadi’s article caused an uproar leading the writer to express his intention to seek asylum in the West. Although Baghdadi never declared himself an atheist, he was highly regarded among the underground Gulf atheist community as someone who championed their causes and demands.

My bold, and I do so for the reason that a religious institution, along with the direct good & bad (for let us be honest, all human institutions do both) it does, also provides a ladder of power, for someone must direct the institution, be the title Mufti, Pope, or Pastor, and by the same token, the person assuming the role will have great influence to achieve personal goals. These goals may be selfless, selfish, or both; there is no restriction on the category.

But because this is an institution built entirely on the study and employment of a collection of knowledge which, in my view, is most likely constructed wholly from the human imagination, the requirements of intellectual attainment are not comparable to, for example, a particle physicist, who is studying hard reality. Learn some theology, construct a flexible or even innovative interpretation, realize that a self-destructive philosophy is not profitable in any respect, and you’re in business. Baghdadi’s remark is a handy condensation of this observation.

The study of a religion is not just a field of study, it’s a path to power, and perhaps the most handy one for those who are not so subtle of mind. But that is not my attribution for the concern about atheism in its currently reportedly small numbers; it has probably been sullied by the dominant religions, and the local populace merely reacts as instructed. Even those in positions of power in those religions may not use this analysis, for many books of religion warn against the atheist.

But if God is God, then what does he care if someone disbelieves him? The cry of apostasy betrays the essential human foundation of religion.

Back when Papal Authority meant Worldly Authority

Not particularly familiar with Michaelangelo? The mini-documentary preceding the TV showing of The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965) provides a useful and interesting introduction to the legendary sculptor, exploring a number of his objects in close detail.

And then it’s on to the movie. A dramatization of Julius’ decision to force Michaelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel, we get to follow Michaelangelo around as he starts, stops, restarts, and has the usual emotional artist problems with his subject, all the while mistreating his patron as well as the woman in love with him. I suppose, having done no research, a glib assessment of the good artist would suggest the man was OCD, or perhaps autistic.

But that is neither here nor there. As a classic movie from a classic era starring classic stars (Heston & Harrison), I was disappointed; it all rang a trifle false. Perhaps it felt like it was ticking all the boxes – artistic agony, spots of humor, irrational behavior, artistic purity. A problem in Belated Movie Reviews is that I’m looking at movies out of context, meaning that other movies viewed since then inadvertently color my assessment of these movies, an anachronistic twist in the time continuum which may not be remedied.

Another problem is that I’m sick and may simply misperceive what is, in reality, a brilliant movie.

But I couldn’t help feeling that Harrison was mostly smirking his way through the movie, even as he returns from the Papal war campaigns with severe wounds and ends up in his deathbed, only to be rescued by Michaelangelo (Heston) with a magnificently subtle bit of snark.

It’s hard for me to say. My Arts Editor says all the musical accompaniment is an anachronism, music not composed until centuries later in a form not invented until after the time portrayed in this movie. But undeniably this is a professionally made movie and won’t kill you to watch. So if you’re looking at a rainy afternoon, this might fit the bill for the lazy.

Oh, and I enjoyed the marble quarry scene. I had never thought about the process. Good to know.

Adsorb:

Adsorption is the adhesion of atoms, ions, or molecules from a gas, liquid, or dissolved solid to a surface. This process creates a film of the adsorbate on the surface of the adsorbent. This process differs from absorption, in which a fluid (the absorbate) is dissolved by or permeates a liquid or solid (the absorbent), respectively. Adsorption is a surface-based process while absorption involves the whole volume of the material. The term sorption encompasses both processes, while desorption is the reverse of it. Adsorption is a surface phenomenon. [Wikipedia]

Referenced in yesterday’s post concerning a game for building metal-organic frameworks for reducing climate change gases.

In Land of Doom (1986) we are presented with a mildly interesting glimpse into an underground city, where the locals have lived for thousands of years. It may be similar to this abandoned city, more recently discovered, or like Derinkuyu, located in Turkey, where this movie was made:

The permanence of the dwellings leads me to consider the impermance of the life that it houses. In fact, it’s a fine contrast to the plot of this movie, a Mad Max derivative starring a guy prettier than Mel Gibson, but not nearly as talented. Something’s blown up civilization, and the murdering rapists are driving the survivors to extinction. The city will persist, but not the life inhabiting it.

Nor the ewok-derivatives.

Yeah, don’t see this dog unless you want to see the terrain. Or have a head cold, like us.